Anti-Fascism

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The labour movement must mobilise against the far right

Far right mobilisations were held in London, Bristol, Leeds, Glasgow, Newcastle, and beyond, on 13-14 June, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement. In London, thousands of far-right demonstrators took to the streets, ostensibly in defence of memorials and statues. Bristol saw hundreds, perhaps 500, with similar numbers in Leeds and Glasgow. The organisers of the Black Lives Matter demonstration in London called off Saturday’s planned demonstration for this reason. London Anti-Fascist Assembly cancelled their planned counter-demonstration to this far-right threat. Many involved were hit...

Protests sweep the country: London, Newcastle, West Midlands, Edinburgh

London By Jay Dawkey There were maybe 2,000 people at the Central London demonstration in Hyde Park on Friday 12 June. About 60-40 black-white, overwhelmingly young. Demands and chants were mostly “Black Lives Matter” and “No Justice No Peace”. Speakers included a pan-Africanist; an author and lecturer (booed when he talked about entrepreneurship and aspiring to be a multi-millionaire); a guy from the West Papua campaign. The others were not introduced and all said they weren’t that used to speaking. Ideas included: better training for police, psych evaluations, appeal to MPs (not clear on...

The end of the First American Republic?

With Biden currently well ahead in the polls for the November US Presidential Election, we should be very concerned about how Trump’s cult of street thugs, simpletons, and Klansman are going to react when he loses the presidential election. They are convinced there is a conspiracy from the “deep state” and that the election will likely be rigged against him, despite all the evidence suggesting it is in fact his Republican Party who are attempting to rig it through attacks on the press and voter suppression. We have seen over the past month two different sides of America, both prepared to...

The left and self-defence

On 3 December, walking through Trafalgar Square on my way home from the anti-Trump demonstration, I noticed an SWP stall that had been turned upside down. Skinheads, police, and SWP members were nearby. The SWP were asking the police. “Aren’t you going to do anything, he just knocked over our stall?” The police looked unsure of what to do. Three people were jeering and doing Nazi salutes at the SWP. One got close enough to an SWP member and appeared to hit him and kick him to the ground. The police still looked unsure whether to intervene. Although maybe 50+ years old and a little inebriated...

When workers beat the fascists: how the left fought the antisemites at Cable Street

IN OCTOBER 1936, the workers of East London stopped police-protected fascists marching through the Jewish areas of the East End. The Battle of Cable Street was an epic, and is now a myth-enshrouded event in British working-class history. The far right is on the rise in many countries. The fight against fascism may once more become a matter of life and death to the labour movement. What lessons for this work can we learn from the anti-fascist struggle in East London? Did ‘objective conditions’ and, after 1934, Establishment disapproval kill off Mosleyism, or was it direct action on the streets...

Leon Trotsky on fascism

“The magnates of finance capital are unable by their force alone to cope with the proletariat. They need the support of the petty bourgeoisie. ‘For this purpose it must be whipped up, put on its feet, mobilised, armed. But this method has its dangers. While it makes use of fascism, the bourgeoisie nevertheless fears it. “Under the conditions of capitalist disintegration and of the impasse in the economic situation, the petty bourgeoisie strives, seeks, attempts to tear itself loose from the fetters of the old masters and rulers of society. It is quite capable of linking up its fate with that...

Labour dumps Kashmir policy

Labour chair Ian Lavery has written a letter to Indian-background voters in the UK saying that “Labour is opposed to external interference in the political affairs of any other country”. Lavery does nod towards the right of the Kashmiri people “to have a say in their own future”, but insists that “Kashmir is a bilateral matter for India and Pakistan to resolve together”. “Labour will not take a pro-Indian or pro-Pakistan stance on Kashmir”. Lavery’s statement is a mass of evasions — denouncing “external interference” in such a way as to rule out international solidarity, and dismissing the...

Drain the far right swamp!

On 20 September, a 16 year old from Bradford was found guilty and detained for five years for seriously attempting to build a powerful bomb filled with shrapnel. Although the eventual target is unclear, the court heard “he searched for and watched videos about the English Defence League, attacks on Muslims”. He also praised Adolf Hitler, telling friends “gas the Jews”. This 16 year old was not just desensitised to the horrors of Nazism or far-right racism. He was ideologically convinced by them. In Britain there is a growing threat of far right ideology. Only a tiny few will make the jump to...

Letters

A “Free Tommy Robinson” demo in Leeds on 7 September drew only 50 people. Tommy Robinson’s arrest last year was outside Leeds Crown Court, and since then there have been five “free Tommy” marches in the city by various combinations of ex-EDL, “Yorkshire Patriots”, “Yellow Vests”, “For Britain”. They are always a few far-rightists filming all our left wing or anti-Brexit demos, and for a while there was a far-right demonstration of some sort or another in the city almost every weekend. There is a loose Labour network on WhatsApp and Facebook for anti-fascist mobilisations, usually working with...

Convergence on the right

″The right has changed; it has embraced the ideas of its outliers″, argues Dave Renton at the start of The New Authoritarians, Convergence on the Right. By embracing the outliers, Renton says, Trump and others have ″radicalised″ their conservative message. At the same time Renton says, the left has failed to reassess the shape of the new right spectrum and have been weak on challenging its central ideas. The most important of these, for Renton, is its particular form of racism, how the ″right seeks to restrict welfare benefits to members of the [invented] national community, excluding migrants...

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